00:00By bringing these top business executives on his trip to China, what do you think Trump is looking to achieve?
00:05We have to remind ourselves that this visit is happening against the backdrop of an increasingly unpopular war in Iran.
00:12Over the past couple of months, we've seen ceasefires turn on, turn off.
00:17We've seen Straits of Hormuz and the blockages there still creating havoc with international energy markets.
00:23And right now, we don't have a peace deal on the table that is acceptable to both sides.
00:28So at a time where the population, the American voters, are becoming increasingly impatient with the progress of this war,
00:37Donald Trump definitely needs a win.
00:39And I do think that this visit to China is his way of giving the people something that they can
00:45celebrate.
00:46If there are economic deals on the table that he can deliver home to, that might help to turn around
00:51his waning popularity ahead of midterm elections in November.
00:56What can we expect from this delegation? Do you see any major deals coming out of it?
01:01I think there will be a lot of deals that come out of it that President Trump can sell as
01:05a win.
01:05You may recall that in April of last year, China blocked its commercial airlines from receiving deliveries of Boeing aircraft
01:13and aircraft componentry.
01:15This was at the height of the tariff tit for tat between the U.S. and China.
01:21And so this Boeing deal was a little bit of the collateral damage of that escalating trade dispute.
01:28Now it seems that relationships are repairing and there has been reporting that one of the big deals to potentially
01:35come out of this visit is that China will allow Boeing equipment and components to return back to the Chinese
01:41market.
01:42Agriculture is always a really sensitive point for American consumers and the American trade system.
01:49So more deals on agriculture, particularly on more investment, more trade on things like soybeans, which we saw was a
01:58really big part of previous trade negotiations.
02:01I think that will all help to cement President Trump's self-image as a dealmaker.
02:07What does NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's absence from the group mean for bilateral tech export controls and the AI race?
02:14I do think there is something there about the U.S. trying to withhold some of those frontier companies because
02:20of the sensitivities around AI competition.
02:23So that's NVIDIA, OpenAI and Anthropic.
02:26None of these companies are represented in the trade delegation to China.
02:30It does strike me as a little bit too much of a coincidence.
02:33Jensen Huang in particular, he rarely, rarely forgoes an opportunity to promote NVIDIA's business in China.
02:41So there's a couple of ways of reading this.
02:44One is that it's potentially to neutralize any criticism of a deal on AI.
02:50You may recall that in previous negotiations where the Trump administration has decided to trade off access to chips, he
02:58has faced a lot of criticism from China hawks back home.
03:01So this may be a way to ameliorate some of those sensitivities around how much of national security sensitive technologies
03:09the United States is willing to trade.
03:12Another perhaps more optimistic reading on my part is that perhaps Beijing and Washington are trying to set the ground
03:20for some more positive and collaborative discussions about AI safety and risks.
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